As someone who writes about software (or apps, as we’re apt to say these days) daily for work and fun, I always enjoy reading the story behind the software we use. Folklore.org is one of the most fun sites online, in my opinion, simply because it tells the story behind the early days of Apple and the Mac (as well as a few interesting stories about Microsoft).

If there’s any company we’d be interested in the story behind its apps, it’d be Apple. Over the past month, that’s started happening, to a degree, thanks to Don Melton, a former Apple employee who started the Safari and Webkit projects. He’s quite an interesting guy, having first worked as a member of the Netscape team, then after releasing Safari worked on Calendar, Contacts, Messages, and FaceTime for Mac in Apple. He’s started writing since his retirement from Apple, and has started out with three fascinating short peeks at Safari’s development in Apple. (more…)

Have you ever been frustrated by your Mac’s display dimming, then going to sleep, right while you were in the middle of reading an article or waiting for a task to finish? Your Mac will usually keep the screen running while you’re watching a movie, but otherwise, it’s up to you to move the mouse or tap a key every so often to keep your Mac awake.

Our own Heather Weaver recently reviewed the new Mac app Should I Sleep, and found that it was a great solution to this problem. It’ll monitor almost everything on your Mac, detecting everything from your face to currently active downloads, to keep your Mac from going to sleep when you’ve got work to be done.

Should I Sleep is a free download with in-app purchases for the extra sensors beyond the free included face detection. Getting all of the sensors usually costs $2.99, but this week, we’ve got 10 copies of Should I Sleep with all of the sensors included to giveaway to our readers. Just comment below and let us know what you’re usually doing when your Mac goes to sleep but you don’t want it to, and we’ll enter you in our giveaway. Better yet, share the giveaway on Twitter, Facebook, or App.net and share the link below, and you’ll get an extra bonus entry.

Hurry and get your entry in; we’ll close the giveaway on January 17th, 2013!

Envato staff or those who have written more than two articles or tutorials for AppStorm are ineligible to enter.

The new year is here, and with it should come a ton of exciting new apps and app updates. A number of our favorite app developers have already announced major updates coming this year. Throw in the countless new apps that will come out, and perhaps an as-yet-unannounced app upgrade from Apple or Adobe, and it should be yet another exciting year for apps on the Mac.

The holidays have come and passed and here we are again with those trusty deals for the week. You would think that cheap prices didn’t live through the end of the winter holidays, but they have. We’ve got some utilities, text editors, and music players waiting for you after the break. (more…)

We’d like to say a special Thank you! to our weekly sponsors from December for sponsoring our site and for the great apps they make. If you would like to feature your app on our site with an advertisement, be sure to check out our available slots on BuySellAds or register for a weekly sponsorship for your app.

If you haven’t already checked out our the great apps that sponsored our site last month, be sure to check them out now!

Ondesoft Screen Capture lets you use a number of tools to capture anything on your screen. You can capture scrolling areas, individual items, shapes, and more, and then you can edit the screenshots with its built-in editor. You can organize all of your screenshots to keep up with everything you’ve captured, or export your shots in all the standard image formats you could expect. It’s the screenshot tool that can handle everything in one package.

Pixelmator is easily one of the best photo editors on the App Store. It keeps getting better, with new updates that added soft proofing, new effects and an effects browser, alignment guides, iCloud support, and more! Best of all, the latest updated added CMYK support to Pixelmator, so you can now work in CMYK colors and print your pictures while making sure they’ll look the same on everything: your computer, your mobile devices, and in print. It even now has advanced PSD support so you’ll be able to work even better with Photoshop files.

If you’ve ever wished you could record audio directly from your Mac apps, Ondesoft Audio Recorder is the app you need. From recording a Skype conversation to saving a broadcast from your favorite internet radio, you can record anything you hear on your computer with this app. It can grab the audio from any of your apps and record it in the formats you want, individually, at the same time. You can even plug in a mic and record your own audio with all the audio controls you want.

And a special thanks to you, our Mac.AppStorm.net readers, for reading and sharing our articles. We couldn’t do it without you!

Our sponsor this week is MenuTab Pro for Facebook, a great way to access Facebook right from your Mac’s menubar. It’s the Facebook that millions use on their Macs to check their profile, news feed, photos, groups and much more without having to open a web browser.

MenuTab Pro for Facebook gives you access to the mobile Facebook site from your menubar, which is a great way to keep up with what’s going on without having to take up all of your desktop. With color-coded notifications and quick options for posting status updates and more, it might be all you’d ever need. The nice thing is, MenuTab Pro also lets you switch to the full desktop Facebook site if you’d like, including full chat support with desktop notification integration so you’ll never miss out on your Facebook conversations.

MenuTab Pro for Facebook feels right at home on your Mac. You can access it anytime from your menubar with your mouse or keyboard shortcuts, resize the window to just the size you want, navigate with multi-touch gestures, and make sure your posts sound perfect with integrated spellcheck. It’s the app you need to stay on top of Facebook from your Mac desktop.

Go Get It!

If you’ve been wanting a better way to quickly stay on top of your Facebook account from your Mac, MenuTab for Facebook is an app you should definitely try out. Right now, you can get MenuTab Pro for Facebook for just $1.99 in the App Store, 33% off its normal price. It includes all of MenuTab Pro for Facebook’s great features, and promises new free updates coming soon!

We’ve collected the top four reviews, roundups and how-to articles from across the AppStorm network in December. Whether you’re interested in Mac, iPhone, Web, Android, Windows, or iPad apps, there’s bound to be something you didn’t spot over the course of the month. Now would be a good time to explore a part of the AppStorm Network you’ve never seen before!

Thanks for reading AppStorm, and I hope you enjoy looking over some of our favourite posts from last month!

MacTuts+ is the superb new site dedicated to teaching people how to use their Mac, and OS X, more effectively. We’ve got you covered for apps, but combine that with an in-depth knowledge of OS X and you’ll be unstoppable, limitless!

This year’s holiday season will bestow upon us many great captured memories that are yearning to be transformed into something interesting, like a photo album. I recently reviewed Photo Album 2 from Flippingbook and found that it could use a few more features. So now we are reviewing PulpMotion Advanced, the other end of the price spectrum.

PulpMotion Advanced rings in at a pretty $129 for a single license. So does the increase in price bring unbelievable features to create the perfect photo album? Read on to find out as we review PulpMotion Advanced from Aquafadas.

When it comes to drawing your next masterpiece, creativity is essential. If you have creativity, the next step is to get the best tools for the task at hand – that is where AppStorm comes in. As you know, we love reviewing useful apps that are often geared towards the creative beast inside us. But what if this task requires you to have a different form of input?

If your next masterpiece can’t be crafted by using your mouse, you are probably in need of a pen tablet that’ll work wonderfully with your Mac; if so, you are in the right place because after spending some quality time with a review unit sent by Wacom, we are pleased to introduce you to Wacom’s Bamboo Create pen & touch tablet.